Friday 18 July 2014

#552 The Greatest Risk of All

     "There are risks and costs to a program of action. But they are far less than the long-range risks and costs of comfortable inaction."          John F. Kennedy

     I'll never forget the video clip I saw on TV of an old donkey that labored all its life drawing water from a well, by walking in a circle, pushing a long pole. When it was old and spent, they untied the donkey. What did it do? It kept walking in a circle.
     In large poultry operations, chickens are kept their entire lives in a tiny cage, laying eggs or rapidly fattening-up for slaughter. Quality of life - for chickens, farm workers, & consumers - is efficiently minimized to maximize rapid profit. Most of us, much like the chickens, don't know & don't care. Work, eat, sleep, die - comfortable inaction of "a life unexamined".

     There are healthy alternatives! We can intentionally become more aware, more conscious - buy free-range chicken, free-range eggs, we can become vegetarian, we can become vegan. We do NOT have to go along with every dysfunctional consumer trend like zombies!

     "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."          Henry David Thoreau
 
     While it's very easy to become "comfortably numb" from routine work, especially in a consumer society, our quality of life depends on our creativity & other aspects of our evolving consciousness. We don't have to physically go elsewhere, but do have to WAKE UP!
     We can & must live an "undivided life" - from our deepest core values. Nothing else is worth our life!



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